My pup – for context a 4 month old Old English Sheepdog – is having the usual puppy biting and nibbling problems which are annoying enough, but we can deal with that and tolerate it.
However, the real problem is his reaction to being told off or being made to stop doing something.
For example, when we tell him no for biting us or withdraw our attention after he has nipped us, he will often begin to growl and bark at us and sometimes even try to nip us with his lip curling up in a fairly aggressive manner. Our strategy so far has been to move away and ignore the negative behaviour as we believe it stems from his frustration at not getting what he wants – so we are keen to make sure the aggressive behaviour doesn’t create a path of least resistance.
The reason for me making this post today though is because we took him on a walk to this morning and we found a quiet spot to practice some recall training, which was fine. He did ok, and then time was up so we wanted to get him back on his leash. Well, he wasn’t happy about this, and even though he remained in the sit, he tried to bite my hand repeatedly and hard while I was putting the leash back on him.
This is unacceptable to me, and it was kind of the last straw for being tolerant of his nipping. My family have already expressed concerns about him joining events as we have a lot of kids in the family and they don’t want him to nip them. If he is now escalating to biting out of frustration or aggression, then that won’t fly at all. How am I going to get some bite inhibition and restraint trained into him? He’s such a nice dog most of the time, but at least once a day he goes mad for a few minutes with these behaviours.
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